Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Visual Communication
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Rowley-Jolivet, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
GeoRef
Right arrow GeoRef Citation
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Different Visions, Different Visuals: a Social Semiotic Analysis of Field-Specific Visual Composition in Scientific Conference Presentations

Elizabeth Rowley-Jolivet

Ecole Polytechnique de l’Université d’Orléans, France elizabeth.jolivet{at}univ-orleans.fr

This study proposes a social semiotic analysis of visual communication in a scientific research genre, the conference presentation. It focuses on the spatial and temporal visual resources available in this genre to create texture and cohesion, and examines how logical relations, discourse structure and rhetorical claims are expressed visually in this particular communicative context. By comparing how three different scientific disciplines – geology, medicine and physics – exploit these resources in field-specific ways, it shows that visual communication in science is deeply embedded in disciplinary practice and varies in response to the type of data investigated, the methodology and epistemology of each field. The data used for the study and recorded on video film comprise over 2000 visuals (slides and transparencies) projected during 90 presentations given at international scientific conferences.

Key Words: clause relations • geology visuals • medical visuals • multimodality • physics visuals • scientific conferences • social semiotics • textual metafunction • visual communication in science

Visual Communication, Vol. 3, No. 2, 145-175 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/147035704043038
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?